In an ongoing electronic communication session, such as an instant message conversation, users can sometimes receive a chat message which requires them to take a certain action to change the electronic communication to some other form. For example, chat messages such as “Can you set up a web meeting to discuss this?” or “Let's have a conference call” requires at least one user/participant to establish the other form of communication (web meeting or conference call). This often requires an intuitive and convenient mechanism for escalating a conversation from a purely textual communication to other more rich forms of communication, such as voice, video or conference calls, web meetings, group-chats and/or desktop-shares.
The process of changing from one text based electronic communication format, such as instant messaging, to another typically involves a number of tedious, manual and potentially error-prone user steps, including: (1) leaving the instant message (or other) graphical user interface to create and configure the new form of communication (e.g., manually dialing numbers, setting up conference calls, creating group chats or web-meetings, etc.); and (2) communicating the newly established communication link to other users (e.g., forwarding a phone number, URL or other token to the intended participants, such as the participants of the originating communication session) so that all participants may join in the extended conversation. The result of these obstacles is that users are impeded in quickly and fluidly adding different modes of communication as the conversation evolves, even when those different communication mediums are integrated into one application. By lacking a simple and intuitive means of escalation, the overall usage of the richer communication mediums is reduced as users are more inclined to make do with the existing method of communication (e.g., staying with an instant message conversation) since the barrier to escalation and the effort required to switch to the more enriched or enhanced form of communication is too burdensome.